The Woman on the Bridge over the Chicago River is Allen Grossman’s first collection with New Directions. His voice is astonishingly contemporary, his often dissociated imagery bordering on the surreal––yet one hears in his verse classical and Biblical echoes and, on occasion, darker medieval undertones. The brilliance of his imagination works against a measured eloquence, setting up a fine-edged tension not unlike the prophetic verse of William Blake, the wild dithyrambs of David, or the more controlled metrics of Catullus and Villon.